Let’s Achieve Something Great Together 5 – Establishing Tone & Detail

In my last post I showed the fleshing out process. The next step is to begin to establish the tonal dynamics of the painting and gradually add detail. I ghosted out (by painting over the whole canvas with a unifying transparent tone) the shapes that I had created when fleshing out. The reason for this was to pave the way for establishing a more accurate tonal balance in the painting. In effect, after ghosting out the canvas, I then fleshed out the forms still visible through the transparent later of paint but mixed the paint tones a few shades darker than the intended end tones. The reason for this is to gradually raise the overall brightness of the painting as more detail is added.